Industrial controllers and their associated I/O devices are central to the operation of modem automation systems. These controllers interact with field devices on the plant floor to control automated processes relating to such objectives as product manufacture, material handling, batch processing, supervisory control, and other such applications. Industrial controllers store and execute user-defined control programs to effect decision-making in connection with the controlled process. Such programs can include, but are not limited to, ladder logic, sequential function charts, function block diagrams, structured text, or other such programming structures.
Unlike general purpose computing devices, industrial automation devices often generate vast amounts of (near) real-time data. This is due in part to the large number of system variables that must be monitored and controlled substantially in real-time for a given automation system. In addition to production statistics, data relating to machine health, alarm statuses, operator feedback (e.g., manually entered reason codes associated with a downtime condition), electrical or mechanical load over time, and the like must be monitored, and in some cases recorded, on a continuous basis. This data is generated by the many industrial devices that can make up a given automation system, including the industrial controller and its associated I/O, telemetry devices for near real-time metering, motion control devices (e.g., drives for controlling the motors that make up a motion system), visualization applications, lot traceability systems (e.g., barcode tracking), etc. Moreover, since many industrial facilities operate on a 24-hour basis, their associated automation systems can generate a vast amount of potentially useful data at high rates. For an enterprise with multiple plant facilities for which data is to be collated, the amount of generated automation data increases even more.
Some industrial enterprises comprise multiple facilities residing at different locations, sometimes in different time zones. In some cases, certain operations at one facility may depend on operations carried out at another facility. For example, a sheet metal stamping press at one facility may provide a finished part required by an assembly operation at another facility. Thus, downtime events that affect product flow at the first facility can have an impact on operations at the second facility, even though that impact may not be seen until several days or weeks after the downtime event. Such correlations are not limited to the plant floor operations. Business level operations—financial analysis, marketing, sales, order management, resource management, inventory management, etc.—are also affected by events on the plant floor at any given facility. In the other direction, business-level operations have an effect on the plant-floor side operations, as when inventory levels drive the demand for manufacture of a particular component, or when manufacture of a particular product depends on when an order for a particular material is placed.
In large integrated systems, unknown inter-dependencies can exist which render trouble-shooting of problems difficult. Analyzing such correlations between geographically distributed facilities, and between plant-level and business-level operations, can be challenging, particularly when an effect of a root cause event at one facility may not be seen at another facility for a relatively long period of time. Analysis can be even more difficult if the manufacturing facilities reside in different time zones.
The above-described deficiencies of today's industrial control and business systems are merely intended to provide an overview of some of the problems of conventional systems, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Other problems with conventional systems and corresponding benefits of the various non-limiting embodiments described herein may become further apparent upon review of the following description.